Giant prehistoric 'unicorns' once wandered over the prairies of Central Asia. New research has shown that these so-called Siberian unicorns lived much longer than was believed, and probably did not become extinct until 'just' 39,000 years ago. Publication in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Scientists remain puzzled by the sudden extinction of Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. New research by scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology, Leiden University and Wageningen University now suggests we might have been too quick in attributing the demise of Neanderthals to invasions…

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Co-Promotor: J.B.R. Oonk

Although exposure therapy is the gold-standard treatment of posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD), only half of the patients adequately benefit from it. Based on recent insights into the mechanisms of extinction, this project examines strategies and techniques to improve exposure treatment outcome in…

In this thesis, we present new laboratory data of interstellar dust analogues.

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

Lecture

Lecture

Can excessive worrying be reduced via stimulation of the vagus nerve?

At the annual meeting of the postgraduate school for Experimental Psychopathology (April 6th), Andreas Burger was awarded the article prize for best academic paper of 2017.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

Insights in diet, climate and ecology

And its application in deciphering hominin diets in palaeolithic eurasia

Promotor: F.P. Israel, Co-Promoter: R. Meijerink

On the 12th of May, Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta on this achievement.

The world we live in is changing in many aspects at an ever-increasing speed – and it will continue to do so. How do we anticipate these changes, such as the increase in atmospheric CO2, the extinction of species, sea level rise, population growth, and industrialisation?

This thesis describes the development and validation of new high-contrast imaging techniques, with the ultimate goal of enabling the next generation of instruments for ELT-class telescopes to directly image Earth-like extra-solar planets orbiting around nearby stars.

Why do we have the languages that we speak in Europe today? When in European prehistory did these languages establish themselves, and what where the prehistoric mechanisms behind the formation of the historical European linguistic landscape?

Can a newly developed, app-based, personalized maintenance program enhance the effectiveness of the exposure-based one-session-treatment for children with a specific phobia?

An integrated geo-archaeological research of the hominin site Trinil on Java

About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

The main purpose of this book is to give a description of the Cholón language as represented in the Arte de la lengua cholona (ALC), a colonial grammar written in 1748 by a Franciscan friar, named Pedro de la Mata. The ALC was transcribed by Fray Gerónimo Clota in 1772. This grammar is kept in the British…

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

Radiation can be used to determine the isotope ratio of a skeleton. This provides information about where our ancestors lived and what they consumed. Dr Andrea Waters has developed a revolutionary method that can trace patterns of consumption from tens of thousands of years ago.

There are over 7,000 languages in the world and over half of the world’s population is bilingual. But how do all these people use their language? And how do these languages differ from one another? Under the slogan of ‘Interconnecting linguistic diversity,’ the researchers from the Leiden University…

A fragment of a human skull discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast off the Netherlands, has been identified as belonging to the extinct Neandertal group.

Leiden archaeologists have identified a number of bone fragments that were excavated in Germany two years ago. The fragments are from a sabre-toothed cat and appear to be parts of the skull of a prehistoric feline that is over 300,000 years old.

For the first time in the history of the Van den Berg prize, there are two winners: the ‘traditional’ one for the best thesis by a student in the Dutch bachelor’s programmes in Political Science, and, as of 2020, one for a graduate from the International Relations and Organisations (IRO) specialisation.…

Marian Klamer's LAISEANG project has been awarded a research grant by CLARIN.

Extinct hominin DNA extracted from >40,000 years old sediment

Jan Erk, political scientist at Leiden University, has been selected as the 2016-2017 Smuts Memorial Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During his residency at the renowned British academy, he will work on his research project ‘The Enduring Impact of Africa’s extinct kingdoms and invisible chief…

Hans de Iongh, associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), was named 'Officier in de Orde van Oranje Nassau' on Thursday 27 October. His work on the prevention of lion extinction in Africa was one of the reasons for this award.

From the 25th to 28th of May, Joost de Moor organized an ​​​​​​​European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions workshop (online), alongside Katrin Uba (Uppsala University), on the 'new' climate activism.

Future technologies will drastically influence our daily lives. To what extent will that benefit us? The Brave New World future congress on 2 and 3 November in Leiden will reveal a range of different scenarios, some optimistic and some worrying.

Do Ethiopian wolves change their diet and foraging strategy in the landscape under different land uses? How land use affect Afro-alpine rodent Communities? How important are Afro-alpine natural resources utilisation for local livelihoods? What is the human perception of conflict in the Afro-alpine a…

This project sets out to map, document and analyze instances of squatting in Leiden from 1970 to 1990, in order to set up an online Digital Archive of Squatting in Leiden. This archive will function as an online resource for academic research, as well as a starting point for public activities such as…

LUC The Hague allows students the flexibility of creating their own curriculum based on their major of interest while providing guidance and support through academic staff.

This programme begins with a broad overview of the phenomenon of language and its use, before giving you the opportunity to develop specialised expertise in one of four areas.

A linguistic reconstruction of the migration of the Tocharians from Europe to China

Four of Leiden's young, talented ethnic minority graduates are to receive an award as part of the Mosiac programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The award will allow these budding researchers to fund a four-year research period leading to a doctorate.

On Thursday 10 January a number of prizes were presented to researchers and students.

Nanodiamonds and charcoal in Dutch soil provide no evidence for the alleged impact of a meteorite at the end of the last Ice Age. This is the conclusion of a research done by Utrecht University in collaboration with Leiden University and the University of Groningen.

Neanderthals in cold regions probably ate a lot more vegetable food than was previously thought. This is what archaeologist Robert Power has discovered based on new research on ancient Neanderthal dental plaque. PhD defence 1 November.

Biologist Laura Bertola argues that the traditional separation of lions into African and Asian subspecies is incorrect. She has discovered that Africa is actually home to two subspecies. Her PhD defense was on 18 March 2015.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, a world-wide effort by the botanist and plant protection community, is making considerable progress in protecting plant diversity around the world, a new report says. The Hortus botanicus Leiden is one of the partners of the project.

Asexual procreation in female wasps leads to an accumulation of genetic mutations, and the shrivelling of their sex organ. Leiden biologist Ken Kraaijeveld published this discovery in Evolution. His research is one of the first experimental studies into the consequences of asexual procreation.

A recent publication in Oryx, The International Journal of Conservation by Tumenta et al., 2013 (Leiden University) on human-lion conflict over livestock depredation in Waza National Park, Cameroon has demonstrated that the human-lion conflict remains an important factor in the depletion of lion pop…

For more than 25 years, archaeologists have worked at the site of Schöningen, in Germany, where many spectacular rare finds have been excavated. To honor the tireless men and women, the photo book